Offering a free attorney to poor people accused of crimes is a necessary service. In Seattle, it’s a service funded almost entirely by taxpayer money—and there’s almost never enough money to do the job as well as it should be done, especially now, in the midst of the Great Recession.
So it’s odd that around $150,000 in public money—probably more—was just blown through in a lawsuit filed by one downtown public defender agency against another public defender agency and the City of Seattle.
At issue: The city’s decision earlier this year to award Northwest Defenders Association a contract representing needy clients at Seattle Municipal Court, worth about $1.3 million a year over three years.
The losing bidder for that contract, the Defender Association, responded by filing a lawsuit in mid-June, claiming it was wrongfully denied the contract. The result: a lawsuit in which public money was being used (by the Defender Association) to sue two publicly financed entities (Northwest Defenders Association and the City of Seattle), which then had to defend themselves—with more public money.
The Defender Association had argued that it met the selection criteria and was the “best and least expensive” choice. But after losing its arguments in King County Superior Court, appealing twice, and ultimately landing before the Washington State Court of Appeals, court records show, the Defender Association filed a motion on July 26 to dismiss its own case, effectively conceding defeat.
City of Seattle budget director Beth Goldberg called the whole lawsuit “baseless,” and said it cost the city around $108,000 to defend itself.
“The money could have gone for something else,” Goldberg said. “It is real money. An average salary and benefits is typically around $100,000—that’s someone working at a community center [or] another police officer.”
Eileen Farley, executive director of the Northwest Defenders Association, agreed.
“Those are public defense dollars,” she said. “Tax dollars. They should have gone to public defense.” (She took pains to add, however, that the Northwest Defenders Association was represented in the lawsuit by a law firm that heavily discounted its fees, charging the public around $30,000.)
Lisa Daugaard, deputy director of the Defender Association, could not say how much her agency spent on the suit. “More than we wanted to,” she admitted. 
The Defender Association challenged this contracting decision for several reasons, including that the City did not follow the requirements for investigator staffing specified in its own RFP, and that the chosen bidder’s proposal ended up costing the City $50,000 more than TDA’s would have. These issues require more detailed explanation than is possible here, or than was devoted to our position in the Stranger’s coverage to date.
We have defended clients in Municipal Court continuously, at an undisputed high level of performance, for 42 years. We sued because we thought we would and should prevail and retain the contract; because the City did not follow its own rules and ordinances in awarding the contract; and because continuing to provide the highest quality defense in Municipal Court is central to our mission. It is hard to understand how it could possibly be in the City’s interest to end its relationship with a defender agency that has consistently performed at the highest level for more than four decades, over a cost difference of $16,400 which was mooted when the City turned around and gave its chosen bidder the higher investigation staffing levels and attorney experience levels that TDA had proposed in the first place.
We did not persuade the particular judges who heard the case that relief should be granted. Obviously, we think those conclusions were incorrect. When we made the decision to sue, like all litigants, we were not planning to lose.
It is hard to grasp how the litigation itself is the story. The more important issues are that the City insists that it can use a bidding process with no enforceable rules and no fixed standards to choose public defenders. This round of bidding also inaugurated a “race to the bottom” in which defender agencies have an incentive to underbid one another (and understate their own actual costs) to try to get contract (this decision was made based on a cost difference of $16,400 on a $1.3 million contract).
We hope the City and the defender agencies can reach common ground that the public defense function should be handled differently in the future. Bidding these contracts every three years — a practice introduced just 6 years ago by the Nickels administration, ignoring universal objections from experts in the field — is not a way to build expertise, recruit and retain the best attorneys, and achieve stability so that the defense can play an equal role in the justice system with the Court and the City Attorney.
These are important issues, and we hope the Stranger and policy makers will engage with them.
Lisa Daugaard
Deputy Director
The Defender Association
Lets add this to the car tab thingy as well. Maybe we can as a coffee cup tab as well so we can fund McShwinns SUV that he uses to go to meetings.
Northwest Defenders Association (NDA) strongly disagrees with Ms. Daugaard. A four person review committee, nominated by the King County Bar Association, unanimously recommended the City contract with NDA. TDA’s claims were reviewed–and rejected–by a City appeals officer, a superior court trial judge, a court of appeals commissioner and finally three judges of the court of appeals.
Now that TDA has dismissed its destructive lawsuit I will work hard to put aside my personal feelings and continue to focus on NDA’s mission–providing legal representation to indigent clients.
Eileen Farley, Executive Director
Northwest Defenders Association
“The money could have gone for something else,” Goldberg said. “It is real money. An average salary and benefits is typically around $100,000—that’s someone working at a community center [or] another police officer.”
Sign me up for the community center gig. I don’t make that much money working a real job.
Or to be a cop, I can shoot better than most of the jackwads on the force any ways. And I have training in beating down those that oppose me. Plus I’d look really good in the military fatigues, because I am almost height/weight proportional.
This story really highlights the possibility for an infinite tax-funded lawyer enrichment loop.
Just get three of these agencies together, and all they have to do is sue each other repeatedly, hiring lawyers from the agency NOT involved in suit, then dismiss the case, and rotate members. They’re being paid to be in court anyways, so they can just finance their own careers with tax money forever.